Hogwarts Years - 3
REGULUS: After Sirius left… I want to say I made some bad choices. But I… I was a kid. I was fourteen. I was looking for love in other places. The wrong ones.
I met Barty when he was seventeen.
Back then… three years didn't seem like much. It still doesn’t. But I was a kid. A baby. He was an adult.
I didn’t make a bad choice. He did. He should’ve known better. He should’ve done better.
BARTY CROUCH JR. (CEO OF CROUCH CORP): Regulus Black and I did not have any sort of romantic relationship. We went to Hogwarts together but never once crossed paths. We continue to have no relationship today.
REGULUS: I met Barty at some stupid footie after party. My friends and I had snuck in since it was only for the older students. Actually, I thought we had snuck in, but uh… Pandora got us in. She told us about it years later.
[pause]
I still remember everything. He was wearing a baby pink shirt and flared pants. He looked good, and he knew it.
And before you ask, I did not approach him first.
PANDORA LOVEGOOD (Principal Ballerina, The Royal Ballet): I was with him when they met. It was us and my twin brother Evan. We heard about it from some of the players and decided to sneak in since it was invite only.
[laughs]
Truth be told… we didn’t actually sneak in. I was sleeping with one of the players at the time and he turned a blind eye. I didn’t tell them until years after it happened. Actually, it was when he first started writing “All Too Well”.
When I think of that night, I don’t get a lot of happy thoughts because of what it would later do to Regulus. He’s my best friend and Barty hurt him. The only thing I—we—can laugh about is that we didn’t sneak in.
EVAN ROSIER (Model): I fucking hate Barty. If he had never done what he did, then I never would have seen Reg go through what he did.
But on the other hand, it did give us a killer album.
And people do say darkness brings light or whatever. And I’d say he seems pretty happy, don’t you?
REGULUS: I was sipping a cup of God knows what when he walked up to me. Tall, charming, and just downright gorgeous.
He said, “I’ve never seen you around here.”
And I said, “I’ve been here.”
He laughed at that and I just looked at him. Until then, I had never had anyone show me any type of romantic attention. I didn’t know what to do.
He got close to me and said, “I’d like to see you around more.”
And I felt grown up. A seventeen year old was flirting with me. So I tried to smile as coyly as I could as I said, “I’m here now. Why don’t we use this time?”
EVAN: Before any of us knew it, they were gone. None of us thought it would get to be so much in such little time.
REGULUS: We made out the entire night, and afterwards, he told me that he wanted to see me again.
So I said okay.
SIRIUS: Did I know about my brother and Barty? No. Nobody but him, Barty, and his friends knew. He didn’t tell us until much later of course, but Barty didn’t want anybody to know.
REMUS: There’s a reason he wrote “You kept me like a secret/but I kept you like an oath”. Nobody writes that shit for fun.
REGULUS: Everything moved so fast it made my head spin. At the time, I thought it was love. Now I know it was anxiety.
But it felt like love. We would stay up late talking about anything we could think of. He was the one person who I felt like knew every part of me and didn’t care about how broken I was. He told me about himself and the future he wanted. He told me he wanted me to be a part of it.
And of course I fucking believed him.
When we wouldn’t talk, we kissed. And I was fine with kissing. I liked kissing him. But kissing slowly turned to more and more.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to sleep with him. I did. I just… I didn’t quite feel ready at the time.
I was afraid if I told him I didn’t want to, he’d break up with me. Now that’s obviously not healthy but what would I know about healthy love with the parents I had?
But he was the one who just got me. So I told him. And he said he didn’t care if we never had sex. All he wanted was me.
I was so in love and so naive. After about a year we slept together.
He was sweet and gentle, and I thought he’d love me forever. I was sure this was it.
Two days later, he broke up with me. And after he walked out the door, I started writing RED.
Do I regret it? Absolutely. I was a kid. I had no business being in a relationship with someone in a completely different age group. Looking back now, I was pressured into doing things I didn’t always want to do. Hiding our relationship for example. I wanted everyone to know. He wouldn’t let me tell a soul. I would cry and ask if he was ashamed of me, and he would say he wasn’t but he liked to be private.
But in public, it was like I didn’t even exist. His friends would pick on me and he wouldn’t bat an eye. And when I brought it up, he’d kiss me until I stopped talking.
But hey, it made me famous so maybe I don’t regret it.
[pause]
Sometimes I wish I could go back and stop myself from ever looking his way. But if I had, who would I be today? And I don’t mean the fame or the money. I mean with the people I know and the people I have. I don’t think I’d be who I am today without him, oddly enough. From the moment he left, I knew I wanted to be nothing like him. And I’m not.
But if I could do something, I’d give fourteen year old Regulus a hug.
PANDORA: I don’t think you’re ever the same after your first love. It’s your introduction to what the world tells you is the most beautiful thing in the world. When your first love is amazing, a piece of you will always love them. When it’s not, a piece of you will always loathe them.
Broken is not a word I use to describe Regulus. But for a bit, he carried something broken with him. You couldn’t always see it, but it was there. Little shards of hurt.
And he still carries it today, but it’s a little less broken, a little less there. Now, he turns the dark into sunlight and lets the world soak it in.